Glenn Beck: Michelle Obama Dangles the Bait

by T. Jefferson

Let me get right to some audio and video that is being spread around the Internet that I believe needs to be commented on.Here is Michelle Obama.Do we know where she was speaking?

PAT:I don’t.

GLENN:Can you find out for me by the end of the monologue because this is important on the point that I want to make on this.Listen carefully to Michelle Obama recently about Barack Obama.

MICHELLE OBAMA:Surrounding HIV testing which is still plaguing so many of our communities, which you all know a lot of that is due to homophobia.Barack has led by example.When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test.

GLENN:Okay.Stop, stop.First of all, let me just say this because I think everybody wants us to concentrate on the second part, and let me just say this.Play the first part again, please.

MICHELLE OBAMA:Surrounding HIV testing which is still plaguing so many of our communities which you all know a lot of that is due to homophobia.

GLENN:Stop.

PAT:What?

GLENN:I don’t, I don’t know a single person that looks at HIV testing, Sarah, do you?Are you shaking your head?Okay, because you’re laughing and I thought maybe you did.I don’t know a single person that looks at HIV testing as anything other than promiscuous sex at this point.Homophobia?

STU:So the case would be that I would go get an AIDS test but I’m afraid of gay people?

GLENN:I guess.

STU:I don’t ‑‑

GLENN:It is such a skewed, ridiculous point of view that, I mean, just needed to be addressed.Because that can’t stand.Now, I just have to say one more thing.If somebody has HIV, if I was living in 1981, they have HIV, are they gay?Rock Hudson, wasn’t that his name, Rock Hudson?Remember when he got HIV and we were like, he’s gay?Somebody says, he has HIV.I don’t ‑‑ I think, oh, jeez, who was he having sex with?And I don’t mean male/female, male/male, female ‑‑ I don’t mean that.I mean, you think of the person having promiscuous sex.

STU:Unprotected sex, that’s the point.

GLENN:What you think of.

STU:Or sharing needles.

GLENN:Yeah.Can we please once in a while just recognize how far our society has come, please, just once?

Okay.Now, what else did she say in that magic treasure trove of sentences?Play it again, Sam.

MICHELLE OBAMA:Surrounding HIV testing which is still plaguing so many of our communities, which you all know a lot of that is due to homophobia.Barack has led by example.When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test.

GLENN:Stop.Stop.

PAT:So obvious.

GLENN:When we ‑‑ and we visited his home country in Kenya.Okay.Really?Really?Are we this stupid?Really?"Oh, my goodness, she just verified!"Did she now?May I ask this question:What is it that they’re trying to do right now?What is it they are trying to do?Every bit of their action is poke, poke, poke, make them extremists, poke them some more.Every bit of it!Uh‑huh.Mmm‑hmmm.

Let’s see.Nancy Pelosi gets on along with everybody in congress and says these people, these tea partiers, they’re radicals, they’re out of control, they’re violent, they’re dangerous.I can’t take it!I saw this in the Seventies.I’m very afraid of them!I’m very afraid of them!They don’t want us to pass healthcare because they hate people so much!

Okay.They gave that speech and then they go right out and walk through the crowd of dangerous people?They walk through that crowd to pass what they say… (sobbing).That doesn’t make any sense.No rational human being does that.Poke.Poke.Waiting for you to strike back.Waiting for something to be done.Waiting for you to yell a racist epithet, anything.Waiting.They need you to be what quite honestly many of them were in the 1960s.Radicals.Violent.They don’t know you.They don’t know you.That’s not who these people are. That’s not who the tea partiers ‑‑ the tea partiers, generally speaking, hate the hippies.They may have even been a hippie at one point but they’re embarrassed by it now.It’s like the old photos, you look at yourself from 20 years ago and you’re like, oh, jeez, was I stupid.

So now there’s a couple of, there’s a couple of options here, I guess.One, Michelle Obama has just made the biggest gaffe of all time.

PAT:Uh‑oh!Uh‑oh!

GLENN:My gosh!

STU:She let the cat out of the bag!

GLENN:It’s a treasure trove!

PAT:Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do!

GLENN:Look at how crazy she is.

PAT:Whoa!

GLENN:She just said he’s not a citizen!Oops!Okay.I guess that’s a possibility.I don’t think there’s a very good chance of that unless, A, was she drunk?She doesn’t appear to be; B, heavily sedated, doesn’t appear to be; three, incredibly suddenly stupid beyond belief.I don’t think so.Barring those or a sudden brain aneurysm.

PAT:Stroke of some kind.

GLENN:Maybe, could have.

PAT:Didn’t appear to have one.

GLENN:Yeah.

PAT:Didn’t appear to have one.

GLENN:Can’t imagine that that was what happened there.Second option:She’s speaking to the Kenyan Society of America for the prevention of AIDS.I personally can see a spouse or a candidate going to, let’s just say I’m speaking to the Italian American community.The Italian American house of spaghetti and AIDS prevention.And I could say, you know the whole AIDS thing, boy, we’ve really got to get tested.In fact, when Tania and I went on a trip, she did a responsible thing.She got an AIDS test when we went to her home country of Italy.Now, she was born in the United States, but she’s, what, second generation Italian, or second generation American.So is it her home country?No.Could I be playing to the audience, you know, hey.

STU:Right.

GLENN:"And I’m German, too."No, you’re not.You’re American but, hey, we love you for that.Thanks for throwing us that bone.

STU:Yeah.And how many times has he said, you know, my dad, he’s Italian.

GLENN:Yeah.

STU:People do talk that way.

GLENN:You do do that.

STU:It’s possible.

GLENN:Now, that has some likelihood of happening.Do we know where she was speaking yet?

PAT:I don’t.

GLENN:Okay.

PAT:I can’t find it.

GLENN:If she was at the Kenyan ‑‑

PAT:She wasn’t, I don’t think.

GLENN:You don’t know.Let’s leave that possibility out there.

PAT:All right, okay.

GLENN:She may have been speaking at the Kenyan Society Against AIDS.And that makes that a possibility.What reduces that possibility is her husband is so tortured by these people.You don’t know what it’s like to live with the people contributory negligence my husband’s, even his birth certificate.They won’t leave us alone!"And they are so frightening.I saw stuff like this back in the Seventies and I’m so afraid!"If your spouse were tortured, tortured by people that were claiming that my wife was an Italian, was born in Italy and they were just relentless on it, if I said, "And my wife and the home country of Italy," I would have immediately had a look of dread on my face like, oh, crap, I didn’t mean it that way.And I might have even said, "I didn’t mean it that way," but I could see somebody just going on, "But they have to have the look of dread like, oh action dear God, what have I just done to my husband."Because I know I would have gotten home and my wife would have said, I’m being tortured by these people and what do you say!"And she would have been right.But the spouse being stupid?Not incredibly profoundly stupid like Option Number 1 but just a spouse being stupid and saying something wrong is a possibility.But I don’t think that’s the answer.So let me tell you the third option, what I think it is.We’ll do that ‑‑ hang on just a second.No, go ahead, Stu.No, no, go ahead and interrupt the show at any time.

STU:You were just going to go to a commercial and now you are blaming it on me and that is the sort of blame shifting that occurs on this program.

PAT:Yeah, it was good.

STU:I have some additional details on the speech.

PAT:Okay.

STU:Would you like to hear them?

GLENN:Was it the Kenyan Society for the Prevention of AIDS?

STU:No, but in a way it does explain the first comment that you were very frustrated about.

GLENN:Okay.

STU:She was at the, let’s see, the Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council.So the homophobia remark may have been explained.

GLENN:Okay, that was throwing a bone to the audience.

STU:Potentially.But the other thing that’s significant, it is a June 2008 speech, June 2008.

PAT:Oh, it was that long ago?

STU:Yeah, apparently just going viral.

PAT:June 2008?

GLENN:How did that happen?

PAT:Uh‑oh, Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do!

GLENN:I’m telling you.

PAT:That does ‑‑ I will say this.

GLENN:I’m telling you.

PAT:That adds validity to ‑‑

STU:Option Number 2.

GLENN:Wait, wait.Does it?Does it?Does it?Who released this tape?Who’s been sitting on this tape?Who’s been sitting on this tape?

PAT:True.

GLENN:Who had their videotape recorder going at the gay and lesbian advisory council?Who ‑‑ were you there, Pat?Did you tape this and then decide to ‑‑

PAT:No, uh‑uh.

GLENN:Where did this tape come from at this time?Huh.I think it actually adds credibility to theory Number 3, which we will give to you here in just a second.

<<BREAK>>

GLENN:We’re back with Michelle Obama and new video that is going around now from Michelle Obama where she talks about Barack Obama and his home country of Kenya.I gave you the first two options.The first two options is, oh, my gosh, she’s just verified he’s not an American citizen!Oh!Uh‑huh.Option Number 2, she is just saying something stupid as a spouse.She’s just saying something, you know, political.You know, remember if this came out in 2008, they are trying to ‑‑ he’s a man of the world, he’s lived all over the world, he’s his home country of Kenya, which, his dad is from Kenya.His dad left him to go join the communist government of Kenya.Hello.He’s from Kenya.His aunt is about to be deported back to Kenya because she’s an illegal alien here.That’s never going to happen, but you get the point.So it is kind of home country.Saying something stupid.The third one is, it’s really, why is this coming out now?As we find out, it’s 2008 and it was at the, what is it, the gay and lesbian ‑‑

STU:Leadership council of the DNC.

GLENN:Of the DNC.Who had this videotape and they have been sitting on it for so long?Why is this being released now?Here’s the third theory.The third theory is this is a losing battle.This paints people into nut jobs, just as much as Bush blew up the World Trade Center and Dick Cheney went and was SCUBA diving and he blew up the levees in New Orleans.Now, there are people that believe that the 9/11 job was done by George W. Bush and his henchmen and Dick Cheney only having heart attacks because he was trying to SCUBA dive so much, getting in shape for blowing up the levees.Those people are nuts.The idea of the birth certificate?Let’s just say that it’s not true.Let’s just say that he’s actually born here in America.

STU:Let’s be crazy.

GLENN:Be out on the edge.Be out on the edge.Let’s just say he was born here in America and there weren’t, you know, KGB government operatives that were planting stories in the press this in Hawaii in 1962.

PAT:Okay, but this is all silly.

GLENN:I know.

PAT:You know.

GLENN:I know.

PAT:I mean ‑‑

GLENN:I got it.

PAT:You are asking us to stretch.

GLENN:I know.

PAT:Okay.

GLENN:Let’s just say that he’s not the Manchurian Candidate from birth.

PAT:Okay.

GLENN:Okay?If you have ‑‑ if you’re playing to your base and you are trying to paint people as crazy, as tea partygoers, as hateful, as people you just can’t be around and you are trying to rally your base around you, wouldn’t one of the best things that you could do is go on the Birther thing?Let me just give you the poll numbers on it.With independents, 83‑8.Was he born in America?83% of independents say yes.8% say no.Among adults between 45 and 59, 82 to 8.In the Midwest?90‑6.In the midwest, not the Northeast.In the Midwest ‑‑ think Ohio ‑‑ 90‑6.They have nothing that polls this well, nothing.Is he an American?Yes.The majority says overwhelmingly yes.So if you want to make them into moon landing people, what’s the most effective sign that you could carry at a tea party?I mean, if you are thinking like the Obama administration, he was born in Kenya.It’s the most effective sign to paint you into a nut job that you can carry.Why is this tape being released now?They need you to be perceived as a nut job!